


How One Lives (With You)

by The Stephanois (ballantine)



Category: Agent Carter (Marvel Short Film), Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: (sorry), Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Angst, F/F, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-04-30 14:19:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5167007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballantine/pseuds/The%20Stephanois
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peggy is badly hurt on a mission and Angie nurses her back to health</p><p>AND</p><p>Unavoidable physical intimacy leads Peggy and Angie to realize certain feelings</p><p>OR</p><p>Angie finds out that, sometimes, life requires more than just love</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Self, I said to myself recently, do you know what I bet people are really dying to read? An angsty WIP fic about a frustrating convalescence that features uncomfortable discussions about lifestyle compatibility. 
> 
> My god, I replied, I like the way you fucking think!

Angie's mother had spent years and many grey hairs imploring her to be more _practical_ , to choose _sensibly_ , and _for god’s sake just think of her future_. After the whole thing with Peggy happened, Angie doesn't think she should be blamed for having flouted this advice for so long. Eighteen-year-old Angie had the right idea.

She must haven known that all that practicality and sensibleness would someday break her heart.

–

Six months after Peggy Carter left the SSR to join the new and even longer list-of-letters, Angie arrives home to find her bedridden.

Her heart leaps at first when she spies the blue suitcase in the foyer; Peggy has been away on a mission for over two weeks.

Angie grew up in a family home crammed with three generations of loud and emotionally demonstrative Italians and then moved to a hotel stuffed to the brim with bustling girls and nosy staff. She wasn't used to living alone and had begun to feel like a ghost rattling around the large Stark house she and Peggy shared. She started spending more time at the nearby Jarvis residence, pestering Jarvis and trying to get Ana to like her. (She thus far has succeeded wildly in the former and failed miserably in the latter.)

But the suitcase means that Peggy was finally home again. Pulse excitedly kicking up a fuss, Angie unceremoniously drops her purchases next to the suitcase, kicks off her pumps, and hurries down the hallway to Peggy's bedroom.

Her smile starts to fade when she runs into Jarvis. Then she looks past his shoulder into the room and sees Peggy lying back on a nest of pillows, her face brutalized into a swollen palette of blue and purple.

The smile drops entirely. “Oh my – _Peggy!_ ”

Jarvis catches her by the shoulders before she can lunge forward into the room and gently turns her away from the sight.

“Please try to keep your voice down, Miss Martinelli,” Jarvis whispers, shutting the door firmly behind him. “I've only just managed to get Miss Carter to promise to sleep, and she'll never keep it if she knows you've arrived.”

“What happened to her?”

“Mr. Stark rang and requested that I pick her up from the hospital. It seems she was quite adamant about returning home and recuperating here.”

“How did she....” Angie looks back at the solid oak door, Peggy's shocking state as vivid in her mind as if she was still staring.

“You are as familiar with her proclivities as I am,” Jarvis says, moving down the hallway towards the kitchen. She trails after him and stands there in a daze as he sets about boiling water for that wretched tea he and Peggy both drink by the gallon.

Angie slides onto the stool near the counter. “What are – I'll need a full account of her injuries.” When Jarvis turns around, she says pointedly, “If I'm to take care of her.”

“Of course,” he says after a moment.

* * * *

 

A Full Account of Peggy's Injuries:

                    * Two broken ribs

                    * One recently dislocated shoulder

                    * Deep bruising of her hip, torso, and pride




 

* * * *

That evening, Angie sits by Peggy's bedside and pretends to read last Sunday's funnies.

She has drawn the curtains and tilted the bedside lamp so it won't shine directly on the bed. She could always switch it off and go read in the sitting room or her own bedroom, but truth is, she's kind of hoping Peggy will just wake up.

Upon first look, Peggy's face is almost unrecognizable. Angie's mind really only has one association with bruises on a woman's face, which doesn't help matters. It takes a while for the shock caused by the bruised eyes and cut lip to wear off, and even then Angie still finds it hard to look at her. This makes matters a little awkward, since looking at Peggy is usually one of Angie's favorite activities.

Peggy makes a discontented sound and opens her eyes.

Angie sets aside the newspaper and leans forward. She reaches out and lays her hand over Peggy's where it lay on the bedspread, unnaturally still and frail.

“Hey Peg.”

Peggy blinks up at her. Her smiles comes slow and twitches from the obvious tenderness of her lips, but it's bright and honest nonetheless.

Angie leans over to hand her the cup of water that has been waiting for her on the bedside table. She has to help steady the other woman as she leans up enough to sip it. The intimacy is less enjoyable with her awareness of Peggy's body trembling in pain under her hands.

Once Peggy is settled back against the pillows, Angie asks, “How are you feeling?”

“I've felt worse,” Peggy says.

Angie wonders if Peggy thinks that's supposed to be reassuring. She chews her lip and eyes the other woman.

“So can you tell me what happened, or is it classified or whatever?”

“Bit silly, really.” Peggy smiles faintly. “I threw a man out a window. He must have felt obligated to insist I come along for the ride.”

Angie doesn't know what to say to – well, _any_ of that – so she just ignores her own discomfort and tries to smile back. She doesn't know how successful she is.

“If you thought you'd be able to duck out of the doctor's orders by coming back here, you were dead wrong,” she says instead, brandishing her carefully transcribed notes from earlier. “I have them right here, and I'm going to make sure you follow them to the letter.”

Peggy starts to frown. “Angie, I really don't think – ”

“To the letter,” she says again, firmly.

And as Peggy settles back, a look upon her face that one might call _petulant_ (if one could dare to say such a thing about Peggy Carter), Angie feels a tension she hadn't been fully aware of easing out of her frame. Never mind Jarvis's gently skeptical expression from earlier; Peggy is going to cooperate and let her help.

The hardest part is surely over.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a reference to rape in this chapter, in relation to a part in a play.

Two days into Peggy's convalescence, Angie is in the other woman's bedroom, sprawled out on her back on the end of her bed and reading _Anna Christie_ by Eugene O'Neill. She usually reads scripts in the sitting room, or while pacing up and down the hallway, or when soaking in a bubble bath, but today she is playing nurse while hoping to play Anna Christie, so she does it in Peggy's room. Never mind that Peggy says _that_ _really isn't necessary, Angie, but thank you._

Angie wrinkles her nose. “So apparently not only did I grow up in Minnesota, one of the darkest, coldest corners of America, but I was raped too.” She turns the page and makes a rude noise. “And then I became a prostitute!”

“Why do you keep saying _I_?” Peggy wants to know. “Is this character bleed? What is happening here?”

Angie rolls over onto her stomach and fixes Peggy with a look. “You know, you read enough plays, you start to notice some patterns.”

“They're always too long?”

When they first moved in together, Angie thought Peggy's relative indifference to the arts was because it all reminded her of Actual Saint Steve Rogers. A few months in, she now knows it's because Peggy is a philistine.

It's the accent that fools people; you hear a gal with a cut glass voice order Eggs Benedict and you just assume she knows the difference between Thornton Wilder and Billy Wilder.

“Shush.” She swats Peggy's leg with her now-crumpled script. “No, I'm talking about the _women_. You'd think the only source of sadness in our lives is men and how they ruin our bodies. It's always rape-and-prostitution-and-consumption-and- _death_.”

“Maybe you should try comedy,” says Peggy.

Angie folds down at that. She tosses her script to the floor and rests her chin on her arms. “Can't,” she says forlornly. “I get the giggles.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Peggy bite her lip on a smile.

Peggy says, “Well, you can work on that.” She waits until Angie has turned her head and is looking over before saying, “If you think you're about to laugh, just think of prostitution and consumption and death.”

Angie makes it a second or two before her face contorts and then they're both laughing. Peggy's laugh almost immediately cuts out, killed by a quiet gasp of pain. Her hand comes up to gingerly cup her rib cage.

Angie's laugh pretty dies after that too. She's up on her knees in a flash and hovering over the other woman uselessly. She watches Peggy's face closely, and her heart squeezes a little all over again.

“Hey, you okay?” She asks. “Did you hurt yourself?”

“I'm fine,” Peggy says. She speaks with the restrained quiet of one who doesn't want to expand one's lungs beyond the bare minimum required for speech. “Stop fretting, Angie.”

She sits back on her heels and folds her arms. “Sorry my concern for you is so bothersome.”

Peggy's eyes drift heavenward. “That's not – ”

“I think I'm going to go make lunch.” She rolls off the bed and heads for the door. “If you're hungry, feel free to climb out of that bed and come get the food in the kitchen.”

“That's what I was going to do anyway,” Peggy calls after her.

The doctor, who Angie not-so-privately thinks is a complete quack, said that Peggy should move around some, that staying in bed too long wasn't good for her. Angie doesn't see how that could be possible. It all seems very simple; you move around and puncture a lung or you stay in bed until your ribs are more-or-less in one piece again. Needless to say, this disagreement over Peggy's care had led to some friction in the house.

In the end, Angie helps her out of bed for lunch; of course she does, she's not a petty _monster_. If she left Peggy to her own devices, the woman would probably try to cartwheel her way down the hall.

* * * *

“...And then she told me to _beat it_ ,” Angie finishes.

She is standing in a long line in a dark hallway somewhere off off-Broadway. Her friend and fellow audition trench-digger, Colin, stands right behind her. Every five or ten minutes they get to take a step forward and be one foot closer to the audition room. Occasionally a figure comes down the hallway in the opposite direction crying.

“I broke a rib once,” Colin says.

“How?”

He looks lost in thought. “Hm?”

“How'd you break your rib?”

“Oh.” His expression clears. “Running from a bobby raid down on Stanley Street before the war. I swung over a fence and landed in an empty dustbin.” Colin, because he actually is a pretty decent actor, manages to make this sound thrilling rather than just damp and awful, as it surely must have been.

There are two things to know about Colin. The first is that he is very Homosexual.

Angie doesn't judge, but she thinks he's kind of nuts. How can one not like women? Even she, a perfectly normal, upstanding person, can appreciate a nice pair of legs now and again – and maybe again and again after she met Peggy. But that's to be expected; Peggy is a force of _nature_. Angie likens it to how you're supposed to stay away from windows during a severe storm, but you always end up peaking through the curtains anyway. That's Peggy, tossing trees and garbage cans and cracking white hot lightning across the sky.

Colin interrupts her thoughts by asking, “So do you want to go to Sadie's or The Hop afterwards?” Some time after their tenth round of bumping into each other at auditions, they started going out for drinks. It became a tradition, the 'I didn't want that part anyway' toast.

“Sadie's,” Angie says. “It's closer to home. And I can't stay long tonight, have to get back and check in on Peggy.”

“Of course you do. Can't have Miss Carter fetching her own tea and hot water bottle.”

The second thing to know about Colin is that he, like Peggy and Jarvis, is British. Unlike Peggy and Jarvis, he's from Liverpool. This apparently means something important, according to him. As far as Angie can tell, it just means he feels obligated to sneer about everything Peggy-related.

“It's not like that.”

“'Course not.”

“No, really.” The door at the end of the hallway opens and closes and they all take a step forward. “I mean, she doesn't even want me to help.”

“That's how they always act, so you think serving them is _your_ idea.”

Angie just shakes her head, annoyed. She's still annoyed when the line shortens and it's her turn to audition, and she takes the stage bright-eyed and almost indifferent to the outcome.

 


	3. Chapter 3

In the front sitting room of the Stark house in which Peggy and Angie live sits a large mahogany longcase clock. Peggy is almost positive that it is one of Howard's creations, an early project from back before he turned his talents to weapons and weaponizable gadgets. There is something about the design that recalls him – the wood engraving and moving components are a little too flashy for good taste, but undeniably ingenious in their intricacy. It is, as a sum of its parts, a beautiful clock.

Peggy loathes the bloody thing.

Without the normal distractions – the housekeeper humming as she goes about her duties, Jarvis tutting as he checks in on her, and, of course, Angie _talking_ , her voice drifting through the house and filling every room like some kind of friendly fire mustard gas – without these distractions, Peggy's mind is consumed with the relentless, echoing tick of the sitting room clock. It measures the unspooling of her sanity as she lies on her back all day long. She must remember to ask Jarvis or Angie to turn on the wireless before they leave next time.

It's a sign of how sluggish she has become in her convalescence that it takes a few seconds for that thought to make the rounds in her brain.

Staring at the ceiling of her bedroom, she realizes at once that she could just... do it herself. The wireless is in the sitting room, right across from the damnable clock. It's at most two hundred feet. The doctor _had_ said she should move around a little.

The process of sitting up takes an embarrassingly long time, incremental shifts punctuated by grimaces and pauses. She is glad no one is around to witness it.

The pain isn't anything she can't handle. She's been injured before, during the war. But back then there was never any time to waste, and unless the injury was literally incapacitating, officers were expected to remain engaged. Peggy has attended all-night strategy sessions with her writing arm in a sling, driven mission behind enemy lines with over half her body covered in pulpy bruises.

Nowadays, one breaks a rib or two and is sent home with a sympathetic pat on the head, like a child with the flu. _The world won't end if you take a week or two off,_ said Howard. Hypocrite. Like that man wasn't destined to spend his honeymoon and the birth of his first child pausing every few minutes to scribble down design ideas.

The walk to the sitting room takes five minutes. When she turns the wireless on, the Captain America Adventure Program is playing.

So that's her morning.

–

Jarvis stops in around lunchtime with a thermos of soup, a package of smoked salmon, and half a loaf of bread from the bakery down the street – pumpernickel, dense and a little sweet, the kind she grew fond of during the war.

He goes about the business of plating the mini feast on the kitchen counter as she sits determinedly upright on a stool. She's wearing a thick bulky bathrobe over her nightgown, the sole nod to propriety she'd been able to manage before giving up.

“I trust you are greeting bed rest with your usual aplomb,” he says.

Her only response to that is, “Do you have today's paper?”

Eyebrow quirked a little too high to be polite, Jarvis produces the _Times_ and hands it over. She restrains herself from snatching it away like an addict and shifts on her stool. A spasm of pain immediately unfurls around her side.

“Are you all right, Miss Carter?” All humor has vanished from his expression. She finds she preferred the faint mockery over this wrinkle-browed concern.

“I'm perfectly fine,” she says, for what must be the fiftieth time in the past few days. “I just need to be more measured in my movements when the compression bandage isn't on.”

His concern transforms immediately to disapproval, which is even more unbearable. “And why aren't you wearing the compression bandage?”

She's not wearing the bandage because she had been dying to take a bath and properly wash up, having subsisted entirely on wash cloth pat downs in critical areas since leaving the hospital. The indignity of having to discuss such topics has the peculiar effect on making her want to share the embarrassment.

“I took a bath, and it's very difficult to put back on by myself,” she says, and smiles at him. Crosses her leg and leans forward a calculated degree. “Would you like to assist me, Mr. Jarvis?"

Normally she wouldn't dream of teasing him like this, but her temper has been burnt short from a week of listless boredom and coddling. She has little patience for being chided like a difficult child.

Jarvis's eyes do not so much as stray to the dark gap of the bathrobe, though his lips tighten. He nods slightly.

“Point taken, Miss Carter. I'd ask Ana to assist in my stead, but she is attending to business until eight. Do make sure you enlist Miss Martinelli's help when she returns.”

It's not a reprimand, but it's still a reminder she doesn't need. She sits back and eats her delicious smoked salmon and pumpernickel in silence.

She's not sulking.

–

In the afternoon, around 3 o'clock, Howard telephones the house.

She knows it's Howard before picking up for two reasons: first, because the house number is unlisted and only known by Howard, Jarvis, and Angie's parents, who call once a week on Sundays and keep her on the phone for over an hour. Peggy can hear her exasperated _Ma..._ drifting in from the hallway at regular intervals. The second reason she knows it's Howard is that it takes her four full minutes to shuffle over to the telephone, and it never once stops ringing. Anyone else would have given up by then.

Peggy takes shallow, careful breaths and lowers herself to the chair beside the telephone.

“Can I fire Forester?” Howard asks without preamble when she picks up the receiver.

“No, you cannot fire Forester. He's the only analyst we have who speaks Mandarin Chinese.”

“I could learn Mandarin Chinese,” Howard mutters.

Peggy finds herself smiling; even though he was the one who insisted she take time off, Howard is at the very least not treating her differently. She never thought she'd be grateful for his self-absorption.

“It's a difficult language for Westerners,” she says instead of thanking him like a madwoman. “And I don't think you have the patience.” Ignoring the scoffing noise he makes in response, she continues, “Now what's he done that's brought on your wrath?”

“He keeps touching my things.”

She sighs, “Howard, I told you if you wanted lab space in the SHIELD building, it couldn't be private. This isn't Stark Industries.”

Howard must catch her tone, because he immediately counters with, “This isn't me complaining about another kid playing with my _toys_ , Carter. He contaminated a sample of a very rare compound – ”

“Mm, that does sound serious.”

“Yes,” he says. “It _is_. Thank you, and then he – ”

“Very serious. Sounds like you should bring this up with Phillips.”

Howard's tirade cuts off immediately. After a long moment he says, “Low blow, Peggy.”

She smiles sweetly and it colors her voice as she says, “Have a good afternoon, Howard.”

–

Time seems to slow down the closer Angie's return home approaches. It's like the boredom knows it's soon to be vanquished and is doubling down out of spite.

Living with Angie has been one of the strangest but most pleasing experiences of her life – not that she ever plans to share this sentiment with the other woman. The smile she'd get might be worth it, but the subsequent boasting would not.

At first she had a hard time adjusting to not being alone; for as long as she could remember, she's had to hide part of herself – her wits, her goals, her job. But living with Angie, that's no longer the case. Angie watches her go off to work at SHIELD and doesn't think her strange or full of herself. ( _Oh, you're definitely both of those things, English,_ Angie-in-her-head says.)

Now that's she is essentially bedridden, she has little to think about except that one last secret she's holding close to her chest, the one that makes her heart speed up when she realizes Angie will be home soon.

She's back in her bedroom, lying up on pillows as the rest of the world bustles on outside. In the silent house, Peggy is overwhelmed by the underwhelming notion that she is, for the moment, completely useless. Worse, she's irrelevant.

Her eyes drift over to the wardrobe, where she knows a box of as-yet untranslated files on the Red Room sit. She'd grabbed them on her victory march out of the SSR office, reasoning that leaving potentially useful intel in the hands of those fools would have been tantamount to treason.

She shouldn't attempt to get the box down. She knows this, knows it would be reckless and could risk prolonging her recovery. Worse, it would make Jarvis cluck his tongue like an interfering old matron. And it might make Angie's already overblown protective streak kick into a higher gear.

She manages to resist for fifteen minutes.

–

Angie gets home, breathless and brimming with good news – no, not good; _great,_ the greatest news she's ever received in her life. She nearly trips in her haste to hang up her coat and dump her purse.

She calls out breathlessly, “Peggy, I'm home!”

The only greeting she gets in response is a muffled shout and a thud from the direction of the other woman's bedroom.

 


End file.
